M Shed, Bristol, review

This new museum, M Shed, on Prince's Wharf in Bristol is no shed, rather a
community attic over two floors, like Bristol’s very own Smithsonian.
Rating: * * * *

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M Shed at night

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M ShedPhoto: Courtesy of Richard Bryant/Arcaid Images

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1980 record decks used by the Wild Bunch, later Massive AttackPhoto: BRISTOL MUSEUMS, GALLERIES AND ARCHIVES

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Wallace & Gromit in The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, 2005Photo: DREAMWORKS

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Rovers condoms, 2010Photo: BRISTOL MUSEUMS GALLERIES AND ARCHIVES

By James Lachno

11:11AM BST 21 Jun 2011

From Cary Grant to Derren Brown, Tricky to Banksy, Bristol has produced some fascinating people. Now M Shed, a new £27 million museum which opened last week, shows that it isn’t just those in the public eye who have made memorable contributions to the city’s rich history.

Funded by Bristol City Council and a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, M Shed takes over the Prince’s Wharf dockfront site formerly the home of the Bristol Industrial Museum before it closed in 2006. A regeneration project overseen by LAB architecture studio – best known for designing Melbourne’s Federation Square – was kept modest at the behest of Bristolians adamant that the vast, imposing dock sheds which give the museum its name should be preserved. Some plate glass windows and a splash of red paint seemed to be the sum total of LAB’s efforts. Meanwhile, four full-scale functioning cranes tower over the main building like iron giraffes – an uninviting presence.

Inside, however, lurks a charming 3,000-strong treasure trove of forgotten artefacts, arcane memorabilia and local oddities, each with its own unique significance to Bristol. This is no shed; rather, a community attic over two floors, like Bristol’s very own Smithsonian.

The permanent display areas are divided into three sections, named People, Place and Life, with a further, as yet unused, room for featured exhibitions. Although somewhat difficult to thematically distinguish between them, amble about the small, cluttered galleries and it is impossible not to encounter some intriguing exhibit – anything from photography to historical documents to building brackets. Often, these will reveal a stimulating nugget about Bristol’s history.

For example, in the Life gallery, a white padded Inuit outfit is used as the basis for the story of Calichough, Ignorth and Nutiok, a family captured and brought to Bristol by merchant traders in 1577, offering a sideways glance at Bristol’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. The People room hosts a pink spray-painted Technics record deck used by trip-hop pioneers Massive Attack in their formative years.

Best of all, in the Place gallery the demise and grisly aftermath of John Harwood, hanged for murder in 1821, is explored via a book of trial notes bound in his own skin. Those eager for a double dose of macabre thrill can look out upon the very jail where Harwood was hanged from M Shed’s third floor.

M Shed’s unique selling point is that it is a “people’s museum”, valuing all contributions to Bristol equally, be they old or new, grand or small. And so, a self-portrait of Banksy with a pixellated face is hidden away on a side-wall, on equal footing with a painting of two Asian boys playing X-Box at their Grandmother’s house by a lesser-known local artist.

If a centrepiece exists then it is Window on Bristol, a huge graffiti-esque picture of Bristol’s buildings as a looming, luminous dinosaur arching over M Shed itself, by artists Andy Council and Luke Palmer. But even this isn’t given undue prominence among more trifling exhibits – an old Woodbine packet linked to a war anecdote, for instance. The formula works: M Shed’s inclusive approach to framing Bristol’s history offers an unpretentious and vastly enjoyable narrative of the city.